Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett

“ Lings, the last chance of women getting the suffrage by "a sort of accident" vanishes, and very few of us can now regret it, for the long struggle to obtain suffrage has been a great education for women, not only politically, but also in courage, perseverance, endurance, and comradeship with each other.
If the nineteenth century was a time of education for women, it was no less a time of education for men. We have not yet arrived at an equal moral standard for men and women, but we have travelled a long way on the road leading to it. ”

“ Two fires cannot burn together, and the most ardent of the suffragists felt that, while the war lasted, it was not a fitting time to press their own claims and objects. The war temporarily suspended the progress of the suffrage movement, but it is probable that it ultimately strengthened the demand of women for citizenship, for it has been observed again and again that a war, or any other event which stimulates national vitality, and the consciousness of the value of citizenship is almost certain to be followed by increased vigour in the suffrage movement, and not infrequently by its success. ”

“ Disraeli, in the House of Commons, had said, "In a country governed by a woman—where you allow women to form part of the other estate of the realm—peeresses in their own right, for example—where you allow women not only to hold land but to be ladies of the manor and hold legal courts—where a woman by law may be a churchwarden and overseer of the poor—I do not see, where she has so much to do with the State and Church, on what reasons, if you come to right, she has not a right to vote." ”

“ If the anti-suffragists will put into cold print such "arguments" that women ought not to vote because they are occupied with the daily tasks of ordinary life and are not prepared to govern India or manage the Army and Navy, what may not the anti-suffragists say in private in the cottages which they visit in order to overcome the reluctance of working women to put their names to the anti-suffrage petitions?
The women who petition against women's enfranchisement are a type that we have always with us. ”

“ The National Union has not thought it necessary publicly to protest against every individual act of violence. Having definitely and in a full Council, where all the societies in the Union are represented in proportion to their membership, put upon record that they "strongly condemn the use of violence in political propaganda," it appears unnecessary to asseverate that they condemn individual acts of violence. ”

“ If one supposes it ever was the intention of the legislature to give women a vote, and if they do get it, it will be by a sort of accident, in itself objectionable, though, in its practical consequences, perhaps harmless enough. On the other hand, if they are refused, the nation will, no doubt, be formally and in the light of day committing itself through its judicial tribunal, to the dangerous doctrine that representation need not go along with taxation. ”

“ It was universally felt that there was work for women, even in war—the work of cleansing, setting in order, breaking down red tape, and soothing the vast sum of human suffering which every war is bound to cause. Miss Nightingale's work in war was work that never had been done until women came forward to do it, and her message to her countrywomen was educate yourselves, prepare, make ready; never imagine that your task can be done by instinct, without training and preparation. Painstaking study, she insisted, was just as necessary as a preparation for women's work as for men's work ”

“ If it were sound, it would exclude from all share in political power not only working women, but also working men—all who live by the sweat of their brow, and all hard working professional and business men. If the argument were a sound one, the best Government would be a bureaucracy like that of Russia, where the great tasks of government and the management of the Army and Navy "are left to the men who understand them," and where the peasant, the artisan, the professional man, and the merchant have nothing to do with laws but to obey them, and nothing to do with taxes but to pay them. ”

“ With all this wealth of testimony rebutting from practical experience almost every objection urged against women's suffrage, it is impossible to exaggerate the value to the movement here of the example of Australia and New Zealand. There are few families in the United Kingdom that have not ties of kindred or of friendship with Australasia. The men and women there are of our own race and traditions, starting from the same stock, owning the same allegiance, acknowledging the same laws, speaking the same language, [44] nourished mentally, morally, and spiritually from the same sources. ”

“ Women's suffrage always has been, and will remain, a non-party question. The Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association is working as keenly as any of the other suffrage societies. We shall not succeed in 1912 unless we are successful in attracting the support of Conservatives as well as Liberals and Radicals. To aid us in the final struggle it is of no little value that we have the promise of a week's Government time for the Conciliation Bill, if our hopes of carrying a satisfactory amendment to the Reform Bill should be frustrated. ”

“ The blow to women's suffrage dealt by the defeat of Mr. Woodall's Amendment to the 1884 Reform Bill was a heavy one, and was deeply felt by the whole movement. But though fatal to immediate Parliamentary success, the events of 1884 strengthened our cause in the country. Everything which draws public attention to the subject of representation and to the political helplessness of the unrepresented makes people ask themselves more and more "Why are women excluded?" "If representative government is good for men, why should it be bad for women?" ”

“ The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies endeavoured to steer an even keel. They never weakened in their conviction that constitutional agitation was not only right in itself, but would prove far more effective in the long run than any display of physical violence, as a means of converting the electorate, the general public, and, consequently, Parliament and the Government, to a belief in women's suffrage. ”

“ The awakening of women to a sense of their wrongs before the law was a leading feature of the women's movement in the early nineteenth century. The Hon. Mrs. Norton, the beautiful and gifted daughter of Tom Sheridan, a reigning toast, a society beauty, and with literary accomplishments sufficient to secure her an independent income from her pen, was subjected to every sort of humiliation and anguish as a wife and mother which the mean and cruel nature of her husband could devise. ”

“ Asquith reiterated his promise of facilities for the Conciliation Bill, and then merely dismissed the subject of women's suffrage with the remark that his opinions upon it were well known. If it had been his object to enrage every women's suffragist to the point of frenzy, he could not have acted with greater perspicacity. Years of unexampled effort and self-sacrifice had been expended by women to force upon the Government the enfranchisement of women, and when the Prime Minister spoke the only promise he made was to give more votes to men. ”

“ It is one of life's little ironies that James Mill, the founder of the Philosophical Radicals, and the father of John Stuart Mill, who laid the foundation of the modern suffrage movement, was among those who, in the early nineteenth century, justified the exclusion of women from all political rights. ”

“ James Bryce spoke as he did in 1892 of the fact that none of our great democratic colonies had adopted women's suffrage, in evident ignorance of the fact that two at any rate were on the point of doing so. The answer is probably to be found in the attitude of the anti-suffrage press. No body of political controversialists are so badly served by their own press as the anti-suffragists. The anti-suffrage [36] press appears to act on the assumption that if they say nothing about a political event it is the same as if it had not happened. ”

“ In the State of New York, not many years ago, the Albany Association for Opposing Woman's Suffrage vehemently resisted the appointment of women on School Boards and said, "It threatens the home, threatens the sacredness of the marriage tie, threatens the Church, and undermines the constitution of our great Republic." An American senator, not to be outdone, improved even upon this, and spoke of school suffrage for women in Massachusetts in the following terms: "If we make this experiment we shall destroy the race which will be blasted by the vengeance of Almighty God." ”

“ Societies of the National Union are now, therefore, in existence in all parts of Great Britain, and take an active part in electoral work. The National Union regards this part of its work as the most important it has to do, both as propaganda and as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon the Government. Its election policy is to oppose its enemies and support its friends, and in carrying out this policy it disregards all parties. ”

“ If it should be found possible to arrange a safe and well-adjusted alteration of the law as to political power, the man who shall attain that object, and who shall see his purpose carried onward to its consequences in a more just arrangement of the provisions of other laws bearing upon the condition and welfare of women, will, in my opinion, be a real benefactor to his country. ”

“ It has been remarked that the successful conduct of every great change needs the combination of the spirit of order with the spirit of audacity. It was the good fortune of the women's movement in England to secure both these. The suffrage societies from the first saw the necessity of keeping to suffrage work only; but the same individuals in a different capacity were labouring with heroic persistence and untiring zeal to lift up the conditions of women's lives in other ways ”

“ Of course a very different measure is applied to men and women in these matters. Women are expected to be able to bear every kind of injustice without even "a choleric word"; if men riot when they do not get what they want they are leniently judged, and excesses of which they may be guilty are excused in the House of Commons, in the press, and on the bench on the plea of political excitement. Compare the line of the press on the strike riots in Wales and elsewhere with the tone of the same papers on the comparatively infinitesimal degree of violence shown by the militant suffragists. ”

“ The volumes of his correspondence, published in 1908, show how constantly his mind dwelt on the grave injustice to women involved by their exclusion from political rights, and also how deeply he was convinced that the whole of society loses by treating them as if they had no responsibility for the right conduct of national affairs. ”

“ As a fairly regular reader of the Anti-Suffrage Review I may say that the advocacy of municipal suffrage and eligibility for women bears about the same proportion to the anti-suffrage part of it as Falstaff's bread did to his sack; it is always one halfpennyworth of bread, and even that is sometimes absent, to an intolerable deal of sack. ”

“ Where women have the municipal vote there is no opposition to it in any quarter, because it is overwhelmingly evident, as Mr. Gladstone once said, that "it has been productive of much good and no harm whatever."
English suffragists can only heartily rejoice that English anti-suffragists are so much more intelligent than those of the United States. It shows that they are capable of learning from experience. Women have had the municipal vote in Great Britain since 1870, and they have voted for Poor Law Guardians and School Boards (where such still exist) from the same date. ”

“ Some political antiquarians in this country have expressed their conviction that in early times when the institution of feudalism was the strongest political force in England, women exercised electoral rights in those cases where they were entitled as landowners or as freewomen of certain towns to do so. [4] This view has been combated by other authorities, and has not been accepted in the law courts, where special emphasis has been laid on the fact that no authentic case of a woman having actually cast a vote, as of right, in a Parliamentary election can be produced. ”

“ Everything points to the growing volume and force of the women's movement. Even if victory should be delayed it cannot be delayed long. The suffragists ought to be the happiest of mankind, if happiness has been correctly defined as the perpetual striving for an object of supreme excellence and constantly making a nearer approach to it. ”

“ The effect on home life is universally said to have been good. The birth-rate in New Zealand has steadily increased since 1899, and it has now, next to Australia, the lowest infantile mortality in the world. In South Australia, where women have been enfranchised since 1893, the infantile death-rate [41] has also been reduced from 130 in the 1000 to half that number. Our own anti-suffragists are quite capable of representing that this argument means that we are so foolish as to suppose that if a mother drops a paper into a ballot-box every few years she thereby prolongs the life of her infant. ”